I'm beginning to think this J.D. Vance guy is some kind of whore who will say or do anything for money. I wonder if Peter Thiel would agree with that sentiment? After all, Vance has accused Harris of sleeping her way to the top and since every Republican accusation is a confession...

I missed that. How has she been listening to Bernie Sanders?

The cover of the book also says that Vance wrote the forward in the book. I hope it's too late for the publisher to change it. I'd love to read what Trump's VP choice has to say about the Christian Nationalist overthrow of out nation. Not that I'd ever pay money for a copy of the book, to be clear.

Hey! He survived his own personal Vietnam!

"It's amazing, I can't even believe it. I've been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It's like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider," Trump said in the interview when Howard Stern asked how he handled making sure he wasn't contracting STDs from the women he was sleeping with.

The only way to get around the court is to amend the constitution itself.

That's not actually the case. The Constitution says this about the court system.

Article III - Section 2.

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

Emphasis mine. The inferior courts have jurisdiction over all matters other than "cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party." For those, SCOTUS has original jurisdiction. SCOTUS handles appeals to the judgements of the inferior courts "with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."

We do not need to amend the constitution to rein in SCOTUS. Congress, under the this article of the constitution, Congress has the authority to create legislation that limits the power of the supreme court on all matters other than "cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party." Congress can increase the size of the court allowing the current president to add judges. They can add term limits and other limits to SCOTUS. The problem is that one party doesn't want to fix the problem and that party is running the House and obstructing the Senate thanks to the filibuster rule. If we had a functioning Congress, we could pass regulations forcing the justices to abide by ethics rules. We could make it illegal for justices to accept gifts from billionaires.

Sadly, this will not happen without a Democratic controlled House and a Senate with at lease 60 actual Democratic Senators, and a Democrat in the White House. Still far more likely than a Constitutional Amendment, though.

Wait, this guy said that?!

Color me shocked!

Youth excitement building for this election is thrilling! I admit I was one who was uncertain about Biden stepping down so late in the process. I thought it would be hard to build momentum for another candidate. It looks to me now like the kindling was all piled up and all it needed was a spark to ignite the blaze.

Every accusation is a confession, after all.

Particularly since he himself said, in a publicly released recording that, the bullet "Felt Like World's Largest Mosquito." Getting any part of your body shot off would feel a hell of a lot worse than a mosquito.

Full Disclosure: I am not an expert and have never been shot nor had anything shot off my body. I have however been bitten by many mosquitos.

I genuinely don’t get the point of these navel-gazey articles trying to dissect why racists and religious extremists like the authoritarian whitesupremacist populist.

The article doesn't do anything of the kind. It simply points out his lies and supplies the facts on those topics. This article simply provides information that can be used to voters who are not part of his cult but may not understand the depths of his deception.

This reminded me of an old routine by comedian Yakov Smirnoff. He said America was great because of freedom of speech. In Russia, he said, they have freedom of speech too. But in America we also have freedom after speech. That joke really doesn't work any more, I guess.

I had to look up the phrase "Brahmin left" as I'd never heard it before. It was apparently coined by an economist, Thomas Piketty, in a paper on wealth inequality. In it, among other ideas, he used this phrase to describe a shift in voting patterns where highly educated people, who used to vote more to the right, were now voting more left in western societies. It seems an odd choice to me as Brahmin is the name of the highest ranking caste in India's caste structure. That basically included the wealthy and the powerful and to me doesn't conjure up associations with high education. The American Enterprise Institute, a right leaning think tank, says the phrase characterizes "Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and increasingly dominated by highly educated voters and elites."

I gather that the phrase has been adopted by Republicans as a slur against the left in their efforts to characterize themselves as the party of workers.

A couple days ago I posted in response to this silly attack on Harris that I cared less about how a person laughs, and more about what a person laughs at. I suggested that Trump would never laugh at anything that didn't involve his own good fortune or someone else's bad luck. That he never laughs is actually worse than that.

There are 16 Republicans in the House that have chosen not to run for reelection and retire from public office. Biden should tell the Republicans that he'll think about retiring when all 16 of those Republicans do so.

_{From Ballotpedia.org}

How idiotic. Donations to the campaign were made to the Biden-Harris campaign, not just to Biden. Biden dropped out so now it's the Harris campaign until she picks a running mate. I hope this gets kicked out as a frivolous complaint.

Although Biden’s heir apparent, Harris is not yet the Democratic presidential nominee. The Trump campaign said that until she is the nominee, contributions made to Biden should not be rolled over to the vice president.

Um, Biden wasn't the nominee yet either.

Can't they demand that he prove that they are airing false information? If I go on CNN and say Donald Trump molests collies, he could sue me, couldn't he? It wouldn't be on him to prove that he doesn't actually molest collies. I would have to show that I have some reason to believe that he does.

Site wants me to get a $39/month subscription to see the whole article. Guess I'll wait until another site has it.

I have to say that I'm rather disappointed in myself. I can usually get around paywalls pretty easily but this site actually withholds the text of the article unless you are logged in.

Not only do they make their own rules, the DNC has argued in court that they have no obligation to follow those rules since they can change them whenever they want anyway.

"But here, where you have a party that's saying, We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That's not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions." - DNC attorney Bruce Spiva

Why doesn't ABC sue him? According to the article he said to multiple reporters on that call, "I’m not thrilled about ABC because [of] fake news I watched last night." Is that not slander? He is claiming that ABC News specifically is lying. They should sue his ass over this. Everyone needs to stop letting him slide on all his lies.

If we lose this election we will need to have a civil war to save the country? So what he's saying, in essence, is that if Trump can't get enough support to win an election, his supporters should overthrow the government. Am I understanding that correctly?